Page 41 of Still Burning

“They wore black masks. Not one face was seen.”

Fuck!

I rubbed the back of my neck. The caged-in feeling was just getting worse. While the desperate need to find her drove me, I couldn’t find the lead I needed to know where to go. It wasn’t like I could fly to Ireland and start going door-to-door. There had to be something, someone, somewhere that could give me a clue. A town, city, anything to work with. A country was too broad topinpoint where she was.

“What about air control? If they left on a plane, then someone had to know it,” I said, my voice filled with raw frustration.

How did a man enter and leave the country like a damn ghost?

“We doubt he flew. Probably stowed away on one of the many luxury liners he uses to import drugs. But we did have air traffic control look into it. We have a log of every flight taken in and out of this state, Georgia, and Alabama as well. Looking at private flights. So far, nothing to question,” she said with a sigh.

“Can you check into the yachts and ships that docked at ports in Florida and left around the time they would have?” Liam asked.

She nodded. “We did. All of them. Even the ones carrying goods and cruise ships, although a cruise ship would be awfully hard to board without a passport and paperwork. It was highly unlikely, but we had every one of them searched. They have the best photo I have of Salem. The one I used when setting up her move here for the job.”

“Damn,” Liam muttered.

“Like I said, Brady Murphy is like motherfucking vapor,” she said with disgust. “I gotta go. That’s all we have, and like I said, if they’ve left the country—and we believe they have—then our hands are tied. The moment there is anything, I will let you know,” Marlana told us and nodded, then turned to leave.

“Thank you,” Liam called out when I didn’t.

She hadn’t helped that much. She’d confirmed what we had already been leaning toward. It had to have been the Irish. The song playing to lure her to the woods behind the shed was the clue we’d needed, but that only told us who. Not where he had taken her.

Micah stood up. I’d forgotten he was there. He’d not said anything, which was rare for him. The grim look on his face wasn’t something I saw often.

“I’ll walk her out,” he said, then glanced at me. “We’re gonna find her.” The lack of belief in what he was saying was evident in his tone, but I didn’t mention it.

I just nodded my head. Speaking was too damn hard.

When the door closed behind him, I just stood there, looking at it. My mind ran through every possibility of where he had taken her, how he had gotten her out of the country, undetected, and if she was scared. Fuck, that tormented me the most.

“The positive thing to remember here is that he is her dead husband’s brother. He won’t hurt her. She won’t be raped. The Landiagos would have been a different story,” Liam said.

I didn’t care who he was. When I found him, he was a dead man.

16

Salem

The rain played its favorite tune outside the large oval window in the library. Two weeks of rain, and I spent the majority of my days in this room with a book open on my lap while I stared out the window. I refused to paint or even go look at the art studio.

Maeve had finally accepted that I wasn’t going to eat as much as she’d like. I had yet to get an appetite. Nausea had even become a thing this week. Depression, heartbreak, sleeplessness had all led to a constant state of feeling sick.

Brady was rarely around, and for that, I could be thankful. The less I saw of the man who looked like Eamon, the better. He had caused this. But then, in a roundabout way, so had Eamon. He had lied to me. Let me live a lie. I’d never known him. Not really.

Sitting in here alone, I’d had a lot of time to think about things. My life and the choices I’d made. The way that fate had seemed to be against me from day one. Give a little, then take it all away and then some. Yeah, well, I thought fate was a bitch too.

The worst truth I’d come to realize was this was probably best for Rome. My being gone would allow him to be a better dad. He wouldn’t be torn about being there for Nixie because of me. There would be no emotion and jealousy for him to deal with between the two women in his life. Because whether he wanted to admit it or not, Nixie was now a woman in his life. The woman giving him a child.

And here came the grief, my old faithful companion. It never failed that when I thought about Rome having a baby and it not being me giving birth to it, that I’d never have a baby to hold in my arms that was mine, the grief that was always present stretched and lifted its head to roar loudly in my ears. I was in one constant turn of pain, misery, grief, heartache, and now sickness that felt like a never-ending merry-go-round. The ride from hell.

I closed the book in my lap, giving up on attempting to read again today and failing by page two. Focusing on the words were too hard. It also made my nausea worse.

I had tried eating more at breakfast to see if it would help, and it did not help. Not at all. I stood over the toilet in a cold sweat for thirty minutes, but I didn’t throw up. Which told me this was all in my head. The depression was doing this to me. Thankfully, the nausea had eased some, but then I’d barely touched my lunch.

My gaze drifted around the room at the floor-to-ceiling books. There was only one wall without books, and it consisted of the oval window I stared out of daily and a family portrait, minus Brady. Which was odd. It was Keira, Cormac, and Eamon sitting in one of the fancy rooms downstairs—I forgot what Maeve had called it. Anyway, Eamon was an older teenager in the photo, so Brady had been alive. He’d have been a teenager too. When he had said his mother didn’t like him, I hadn’t imagined it was that intense. Leaving him out of a family portrait was cold. Even for her. I’d yet to find one photo in this house that he was in. There were several of Eamon though.

When I had asked Maeve about it, she’d smiled and shrugged, then walked away. I let it go because I honestly didn’t really care. I’d just been curious. It was weird.

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